Ubisoft announces the release of Trials Evolution: Gold Edition, the motorcycle racing sequel that's now made its way back to the Windows PC platform. The game is available for purchase from the Ubisoft Online Store and Steam (the former seems to be now live, while Steam says the game will unlock this afternoon). A new Trials Portal is live as an online home to the series, and here's word:

Trials has finally returned home with the release of Trials Evolution: Gold Edition exclusively on PC.

RedLynx's signature franchise, the Trials series first made its mark in gaming with the 2008 release of Trials 2 SE for the PC. That breakout indie hit led to further success on the Xbox, and ever since, PC gamers have been clamouring for more Trials.

That wait is now over, as the competition begins all over again in Trials Evolution: Gold Edition, the biggest Trials game ever released with 129 tracks and mini games from Trials Evolution and Trials HD.

The game also includes all of the features of its forerunners, from the in-game editor which brought more than 300,000 tracks to the Xbox LIVE version of Trials Evolution, to the global Leader Boards and four-player Multiplayer, in both local and online modes.

Loving this game, glad this one finally came to PC. Nin you mentioned needing to be a masochist to play the game, I have to confess those words have been ringing in my ears as I grind out the retries on the hard bits! I have to say that I love it though, only having played the single player so far.

Optional you are right, the bikes are very forgiving in this game. The previous Trials game had just a single bike that was heavier and less forgiving if you haven't played it but I understand where you are coming from. At least one of the bikes should have something approaching realistic properties since there are several, some people would lap up the challenge of it. The power of leaning is the cheatiest part, you can correct as many times as you like in the air and even do a backflip followed by a front flip given enough air time!

Just a word on the digital packaging - I bought the Steam version which also requires Uplay. The Steam launcher is literally just a shortcut to Uplay. This means both Steam and then Uplay will chain launch if you don't already have those running, and also it's necessary to manually launch Trails from inside Uplay each time as you can't bypass the gui like you can with Steam shortcuts (unless I am being stupid, this is my only Uplay game).

The online integration has been a little flaky the past couple of weeks too - it uploads your time to your online profile each time you complete a race or challange and this sometimes takes up to 30-60 seconds between retries and really screws the flow of the game! A couple of times it has waited indefinitely and I have to cancel out. I've also had the live connection to Uplay drop while playing a couple of times and a giant reminder covers the screen saying that some online features will not be available - this ruins your current run and has already happened to me during a perfect run and pissed me off. There's also no way to manually reconnect when it happens and you have to quit and relaunch the game or just play in offline mode.

I love the game so much that I can overlook this but it's a clear negative and if you are wavering on this purchase then give this real consideration. The Uplay integration is actively annoying to me in its current state and cannot be totally ignored.